At SAMs Club, near the spices and baking supplies, they sell a fairly big bottle of ranch powder.

The nutrition facts on the side are for 1/8 a teaspoon which is useless since half the values are set to zero, but I’ve done a little figuring and I think it would take over two tablespoons of the powder to make one PP. Which is really not bad, considering that for 8 oz of dip, you only need 1.5 tablespoons.

The directions suggest milk and mayonnaise.

I KNOW you guys aren’t dumb enough to think I would use mayonnaise in anything except maybe poison.

I tell you: it did not taste like diet ranch dip or low calorie ranch dip. It tasted like delicious, creamy, mmmmm ranch dip. Not as thick as a full fat store brand but not at all thin. Store brand can be clumpy. This wasn’t. Think, Greek yogurt consistency. Because #obviously.

For 4 PP total this dip was a hit at my house — we ate some with snap peas and celery stalks while watching Pretty Little Liars. We’ve eaten some of it two more times and are still on the original batch — so the above recipe makes a fair amount.

All in all, a really richly-flavored and fun to snack on dip for movie night or get togethers. I’m keeping it in mind for if we ever go to a party and need to bring a dip or veggie tray!

Sorry I wasn’t able to post on Friday — it was a very busy day. Not because it was Valentine’s, but because I was cooking up a storm (also unrelated to V-Day) — and that’s what I’m going to write about today!

Recently, Chelsea discovered that one can cook with protein powder. Now, for some of you, this might be super old news. To us, it was an exciting new venture. We have some leftover vanilla protein powder, and if you’ve been reading along, you KNOW how nasty we find that vanilla stuff to be — and so when we found that we could use that powder for good, we were really pleased.

What began as one recipe (for Protein Powder Pancakes) turned into a Google search that resulted in a ton of ideas.

And so, on Friday, I decided to give some of them a try.

Well, wait, back up: Chelsea made the pancakes Thursday night, and they were pretty good! They certainly don’t taste like a fluffy iHOP pancake, but they DO taste like a sweet, protein-y cookie. All in all, definitely something I’d eat again. She experimented with various powders and flavors and spices and made three different batches. I liked ’em! Each pancake was only 1PP, which is nothing to sniff at.

Friday, I made “healthy cheesecakes” and also “stuft cookie dough fudge.” The cheesecakes were pretty ok, and were only 2PP per individual, cupcake-sized portion and the fudge, also pretty good, was 7PP for a big serving.

What I didn’t like: The cheesecakes were totally tasty to me, but I can see why making them for a not-healthy-eating-concerned group might not go over as well. They’re not THE MOST DELICIOUS CHEESECAKES EVER. They’re good; I enjoyed them; but they’re not supremely cheesecakey. I mean, obviously. Because real cheesecake is mad bad for you. The pancakes taste a little gritty, but that’s because their only ingredients are protein powder and water. Again, obvious. And lastly, the protein stuft cookie dough was tasty for what it was, but the base for it is canned pumpkin. Now, I don’t mind pumpkin! But the taste was beyond noticeable — and if you’re not a pumpkin fan, that could be a deal breaker or at the very least, a reason to not make it as often.

Pro Tip: I am making this for the first time today, so was making it up as I went along. The above is exactly what I did. If I could do it over (and I will, sometime soon, and will report back) I would use less water or less almond milk. Though the dip is quite drippy, it DOES stay on the celery I’m using to dip it, but it’s more like a coating than a hummus-style-consistency. Here’s hoping I get it figured out, since celery is great for digestion and has tons of antioxidants, and is kinda awkward to leave alone.